RUMORS
by Neil Simon
(September 6-28, 2024)
Director: Anne Harper
Producers: Nick Munaretto, David Nicholson
A hilarious way to open the season, with 10 epically comedy actors. . . .
The cast: (higher and lower together, then left to right):
Damien Gulde as Ken Gorman
Shelley Scarrow as Chris Gorman;
Sandy Ramdin as Claire Ganz
Jerry Logan as Lenny Ganz;
Cameron Michell as Ernie Cusack
Deena Baltman as Cookie Cusack;
Arleigh Curran as Cassie Cooper
David Planche as Glenn Ccoper;
Matthew Taylor as Officer Welch
Livia Pravato as Officer Pudney
Production photos by Jennifer Etches
About the play:
At a large, tastefully-appointed suburban NYC house, the Deputy Mayor of New York has just shot himself. Though it’s only a flesh wound, Charlie Brock’s self-inflicted injury sets off a series of events causing four couples to experience a severe attack of farce.
As their tenth wedding anniversary party is about to begin, the first guests, lawyers Ken Gorman and his wife Chris, scramble to get “the story” straight before the other guests arrive. As the confusions and miscommunications mount, the evening spins off into classic farcical hilarity.
As the rest of the guests arrive the story of Charley and Myra’s anniversary evening gone awry grows and develops. In the end all the guests are complicit in a cover-up that no one even really understands, but the fantastical events of the evening are hilarious and give a rich basis for great characters doing what Neil Simon does best – making the mundane…insane!
“Rumors,” a self-described farce that has nothing on its mind except making the audience laugh.”
~ New York Times
About Neil Simon, the playwright:
Neil Simon was arguably the most successful playwright in American history, an icon whose works captured the zeitgeist of American middle-class life for much of the 20th century. One of only three playwrights whose name graces a Broadway theater (along with August Wilson and Eugene O’Neill), Simon was known for his long-running stage comedies, many of which were hysterically funny even as they drew on real cultural anxieties and states of modern life. The most famous of these is The Odd Couple, the smash theater hit that became an even bigger movie. Simon was a four-time Oscar nominee and a staggering 17-time Tony nominee; he won three times and received a special Tony in 1975; he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for 1991’s Lost in Yonkers. Simon died in 2018 at age 91,
Of Rumors, Neil Simon said:
“I really was in the mood to sort of go back and write just out-and-out funny, because it’s what I felt I needed in my own life. So I thought it would be fine just to go into rehearsal with a comedy, with a farce, even though they are the hardest to write… as a nice counterpoint to the chaos that was happening in the play, I picked a reason for them to be dressed elegantly. . .”
Neil Simon plays performed by Village Players:
2022 The Prisoner of Second Avenue
2002 Chapter Two
2000 Jake’s Women
1998 Rumors
1995 The Odd Couple
1994 Barefoot in the Park
1990 Last of the Red Hot Lovers
1987 The Prisoner of Second Avenue
1977 Plaza Suite
1976 The Good Doctor
About Anne Harper, the director
Among the other plays Anne has directed at Village Players are The Importance of Being Earnest, The Impossibility of Now, Anybody for Murder, Perfect Wedding, Powers and Gloria, Murder in Green Meadows, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Dangerous Obsession, Tartuffe, Cyprienne, Humble Boy, The Winslow Boy, Private Lives, Cause Célèbre, All My Sons, The Real Inspector Hound/After Magritte, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Sea Marks, Bus Stop, My Three Angel, and The Odd Couple. Recent directing gigs elsewhere include Omission and Gloria’s Guy (Alumnae), A Lion in Winter (Amicus) and Speaking in Tongues (East Side).
During the last few years Anne also directed Village Players’ zoom readings of Old Coots Commune and acted in others; she also zoom-acted & zoom-directed with Alumnae Theatre. Anne was last seen on stage at Village Players as Madame Arcati in Blithe Spirit, and is also president of the Village Players Board of Directors.
About Rumors, Anne says: “The first play I directed for Village Players was Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple, and I’ve enjoyed him ever since. The writing in Rumors is good and the farce comes fast and plentiful. Even I laugh out loud at this play.”
Village Players 